


We Exist in the Gray Area

by nagachiika (xiatudour)



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Guilt, Pining, lots of guilt, nothing super graphic tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-16 15:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18097298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiatudour/pseuds/nagachiika
Summary: Amon has been thinking about the mysterious 'Eyepatch' ghoul since their encounter several nights ago. While he's doing unauthorized investigation work in a coffee shop, Kaneki spots him with files detailing a ghoul close to him. He intervenes and, thanks to reasons unbeknownst to Kaneki, Amon ends up allowing him to assist him with taking down a dangerous ghoul, all while Kaneki is posing as a normal human citizen. Soon, they grow close, mutual feelings solidify, and they are both overcome with guilt for different reasons until reaching their breaking points.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my work for the Tokyo Ghoul Reverse Bang! Thanks to Oro and G for all their help with this project! ^^ Here is Oro's beautiful art that inspired the entire fic!
> 
> http://orogenese.tumblr.com/post/183428492358/we-exist-in-the-gray-area-a-fanfiction-written-by
> 
> I'll be posting a new chapter every day this week!

Kaneki lived his life as peacefully as a half-ghoul could. He didn’t kill when he could just injure, he didn’t injure if he could just dodge, and he avoided confrontation altogether whenever possible. Unfortunately, Tokyo is a dangerous place filled with many ghouls more vicious and malicious than himself, so even a ghoul who attempts to live as Kaneki does is put into an precarious situation every now and again.

Tonight happened to be one of those times. Kaneki had waited until late at night to go scavenging for food with Hinami and Banjou, two good friends he’d known for years and met at Anteiku, a coffee shop run by and supplying protection for ghouls. Now, they split up and were searching a heavily wooded area that was known to many to be a common place to commit suicide. This was their personally preferred method to collect food, as it was safe for them and caused no harm or disturbance, generally. This is why Kaneki was extremely startled when he heard a deep yell coming from a few hundred yards away.

“Banjou?” He called out without thinking, sprinting toward the noise, kagune tentatively protruding from his back. Panic flooded his mind. This area was quite a trek from the city, there were very rarely other ghouls around, and live humans were even less common. 

The tell tale sounds of combat assaulted his ears and his heart sank into his gut.

“Go! Hurry!” Banjou’s voice was heavy and lightly masking serious fear that Kaneki picked up on in an instant. The scene unfolded before him: Hinami sprinting toward him, only a small piece of her mask still in tact on her face, and Banjou being flung backwards into a tree by an enormous quinque wielded by an even more enormous CCG investigator.

“Onii-chan!” Hinami cried.

“Did he see your face?” She made a vague shaky gesture indicating she wasn’t sure. Before he could finish his thought, he saw the dove racing toward them. “Go hide somewhere safe, now!” he yelled as his kagune snaked out from behind him and formed a makeshift shield.

The investigator was rushing toward him now, then slamming his quinque full-force into Kaneki and sending him skidding backwards. With barely a pause he continued forward and Kaneki dodged, trying to lead him the other way. However, he didn’t take the bait and instead kept moving in the direction Hinami was fleeing. Kaneki panicked, not wanting to harm the dove but unwilling to let him hurt Hinami anymore than he might have already. 

He raced after the investigator, wrapping one part of his kagune around his leg, only trying to get him to stop or turn around. However, he must have been a little more aggressive than he intended because the investigator fell flat on his face. He let go of his quinque, which ended up several feet behind him. 

Kaneki grabbed the weapon and flung it as far away as he could in the direction opposite where Hinami was headed. He didn’t know where Banjou had retreated to but he figured if he couldn’t see him then he would be safe from the investigator as well. 

Meanwhile, said investigator was sprinting full speed toward his stolen quinque as Kaneki geared to hold him off a bit longer to ensure his friends’ escape. When the dove turned around, he looked shocked to see that Kaneki wasn’t right behind him. He had expected to be attacked while he was weaponless. 

Now that he thought about it, this ghoul hadn’t attacked him a single time. The trip wasn’t pleasant, but if he was close enough to do that, he was close enough to injure him much more gravely. 

As Kaneki deemed that enough time had passed for his friends to get to safety, he retreated hastily back up the steep mountain with assistance from his kagune. He was sure the dove was fast, but not that fast. 

He didn’t even bother looking back as he reached the top and found both Banjou and Hinami waiting in the car they’d driven there. It seemed that Banjou had even managed to bring some of the meat he’d gathered before the disruption, although that wasn’t what was important at the moment. 

Kaneki noticed another car parked not far from their own. He figured it belonged to the investigator and quickly slashed a tire before climbing into their own car, where Banjou was quietly comforting Hinami. He wanted to make sure the investigator wouldn’t be able to follow them. Even so, he kept a paranoid eye on the rearview mirror to ensure that they weren’t being tailed.


	2. Chapter 2

A few days passed. Hinami was shaken up and he and Banjou were worried about her, but the events of that night became little more than a story that Kaneki told his roommate Hide when he returned home. 

Hide was his childhood best friend, and the only human who knew that he was a half-ghoul. He was also fascinated with ghouls and was awarded endless enthralling tales of the ghoul world by his friendship with Kaneki. Additionally, he found that his friend was more willing to tell him about dangerous things that happened to him if he inquired with interest rather than concern, but that was Hide’s little secret. 

Now, Hide and Kaneki had stopped at Anteiku on their way home from university. The soothing white noise of customers chatting and the door’s chiming served as a backdrop to their pleasant conversation. As Kaneki sipped on coffee and glanced over his assignments, he briefly thought about how grateful he felt to be able to enjoy calm, comfortable moments like this as a ghoul. He knew many others who had no experiences resembling human life.

The bell above Anteiku’s door chimed once again, and Kaneki’s eyes gravitated there by reflex. Even though the coffee shop was a safe haven for him and many other ghouls, investigators and other dangerous patrons did stop by rather often. 

This would prove to be one of those times.

The man who walked in was tall, abnormally and perhaps even uncomfortably so, but his head was craned downwards, looking at one of several thick files he held in his hands. His long trench coat partially obscured a silver briefcase from view, but one glimpse of it was all Kaneki needed.

A quinque, Kaneki thought. A dove.

As he lifted his head to scour the crowded cafe for a seat, Kaneki’s eyes widened in surprise. It was the investigator he had encountered with Banjou and Hinami a few nights before. He felt thankful that Hinami wasn’t here at the moment, since her mask had been damaged and partly removed and therefore she was at risk of being recognized. She claimed she had no idea how much, if any, of her face the dove had seen. It had all happened so quickly. 

By this point, Hide noticed how alert Kaneki had become and had a pretty good idea of what was going on. The 20th ward’s CCG headquarters wasn’t far from Anteiku, and investigators stop by the shop rather frequently.

“Dude, what is it? Earth to Kanekiiii,” he droned, waving a hand in front of Kaneki’s face to draw his attention back. He wanted to stay calm and remind Kaneki to remain casual as well. 

“Oh, sorry,” he murmured hurriedly, shuffling through his assignments with no real purpose. “It’s nothing,” he added with a look that told Hide it absolutely was not nothing. 

“Should we go?” he asked quietly but casually. 

Kaneki considered the question, turning to look at the investigator again. He was sat not far from their table, his back to them. Kaneki could see that he was reading through files, though he could barely see them over his broad shoulders, and even so, the large blocks of tiny text were indecipherable from this distance.

“Nah, it’s fine.” 

He finished the last sip of his drink and gestured for a waiter. It was Nishiki, another ghoul who was a few years his senior. He took his order down with a roll of his eyes. Hide continued what he had been talking about before, some American band he had read about in one of his magazines, but uncharacteristically, Kaneki found it difficult to focus on him, found himself gazing over at the Dove. 

He’d had run ins with CCG investigators countless times, had sat and enjoyed a cup of coffee amongst them even more often. He couldn’t figure out why this one made him so uneasy. Hide noticed too, but kept talking, figuring that was the best thing to do at the moment. 

Nishiki returned with his coffee, setting the cup down gracelessly and delivering it with another complementary eye roll. Kaneki’s eyes followed him as he walked away, taking the opportunity to somewhat naturally glance at the investigators files again. This time, there was an image, and the subject looked awfully familiar. He squinted, subconsciously leaning forward slightly, and his stomach dropped.

Hinami! 

The picture he was holding was unmistakably Hinami, probably taken the other night; while she was wearing her mask, most of it was broken away. How did he manage to get a photo of her that night? Was there another investigator there that they hadn’t seen? Had they been hiding? 

It was then he noticed there were more photos splayed out on the table as well, another of Hinami, sans the broken mask, as well as one featuring her quinque, and postmortems of her parents. Kaneki snapped to his feet, moving toward the investigator before he even realized what he was doing.

“H-hey, Kaneki!” Hide aggressively whispered. Kaneki wasn’t stupid, but he sure could be impulsive, and Hide was terrified for what he was about to do. He tried to grab his friend’s arm but he was already out of reach, coffee in hand. 

Kaneki had but an inkling of a plan when he bumped into the investigator’s back violently. The papers in the dove’s hand were sent flying as Kaneki dumped his coffee onto the table, letting the porcelain cup fall as well, making a loud thud as it landed on the table and a crash as it shattered on the floor. 

Dozens of coffee-coated papers surrounded the table in the aftermath, some drifting down like feathers and landing in the rapidly cooling mess. The investigator hastily shoved himself backwards in his chair and held his hands in the air incredulously. 

“I’m so sorry!” Kaneki shouted gracelessly, genuinely surprised at the sheer volume of mess he’d managed to create, and feeling quite embarrassed as now he had every eye in Anteiku trained on him. He knelt to the ground, wincing as he knelt on a shard of the coffee cup and tried to look like he was helping to clean up the papers. 

What a stupid fucking idea, he thought to himself. This was absolutely not the only copy of the files they had on Hinami. All he’d done was cast suspicion on himself! What could he do now? 

He reached under the table to grab the remainder of the pages when the title “TORSO - S-RATED” leaped out at him. Saeki was a local ghoul who had been dubbed Torso by the CCG due to his obsessive habit of delimbing his victims. He scanned the information on the page; they didn’t have much at all. It pissed him off, how much intel they could gather on a harmless ghoul like Hinami, but for someone like Saeki who did real, cruel damage to ghouls and humans alike, they had next to nothing. He must have been dwelling on this annoyance longer than he’d realized, because the investigator had taken notice of his fixed attention.

“Excuse me,” adeep voice boomed from above, causing him to tense reflexively. “That’s confidential information. You can’t be reading that!” 

Kaneki put on his most innocent expression before raising his head to answer the Dove. 

“I’m- I’m very sorry, sir!” he groveled, throwing in a false stutter for good measure. He noticed the dove’s expression soften considerably at the very moment they made eye contact. “It’s just… I’ve seen this person before!” He held up the paper so the investigator could see, hoping his gamble would pay off. “Is he really a ghoul? And such a dangerous one?”

The investigator cleared his throat, and the voice that followed was much more gentle than before. I’ve really charmed him, Kaneki thought. If I can distract him and keep his attention on Saeki, I can protect Hinami.

“Oh…yes. He’s a nasty one…” He paused a moment, appearing to be considering his options, internally battling with himself over something. “Normally I would have you be formally interviewed by information specialists at the CCG. However, due to the urgency of this threat, I think it is best if you just work with me directly.” His eyes darted around the room nervously as he spoke. Kaneki found it endearing.

If I could help him work on this case, maybe that would give me time to figure out how to help Hinami, he though. I could possibly even gain the access needed to get rid of the information they have on her.

The dove handed him a business card.

“Amon Koutarou,” he read aloud. The investigator’s eyes sparked at hearing his name come from Kaneki’s lips. 

“Yes,” his voice was even softer than before. He lowered it to a whisper as he continued, looking around quite conspicuously. “We aren’t supposed to allow normal citizens to assist us in this manner, but I’m not supposed to be working on this case at the moment, either. We will have to be very careful and discreet.”

Kaneki smiled. 

“I won’t tell a soul.”

\-------

“-and he’s gonna let me help him find Torso. We’re meeting tonight so I can show him his usual spot.” Back at their apartment, Kaneki finished telling Hide everything that had happened at Anteiku. He’d been out of their earshot and was bugging Kaneki to give him the details the entire walk home.

“Like a stakeout? What the hell, are you stupid?” Hide scolded Kaneki. “And what happens if he’s there? He’ll recognize you.”

“We’ll just be stealthily observing. Seeing where he spends time, taking photos, gathering information… I think. I don’t know. I didn’t ask a lot of questions, I was just thankful my plan worked.”

“As if you had a plan!” Hide scoffed. “Just promise me you won’t do anything mindless and impulsive like you did earlier,” he chided, but there was a lighter note to his voice and his face had regained its usual humor. “You’re lucky he thought you were cute or that could’ve gone a lot worse.”

Kaneki rolled his eyes at Hide’s teasing, but he didn’t retort. It seemed the dove - no, Amon, he should get used to calling him Amon - had clearly been taking a big risk by choosing to disclose sensitive information and allowing him to help him investigate. Kaneki would be lying if he said he didn’t suspect it was something about himself that persuaded Amon to accept and allow his help. He felt his gut turn with a twinge of excitement as he thought about the night ahead.


	3. Chapter 3

They met outside a station about ten minutes from the CCG headquarters. Amon had turned down an invitation to go out for drinks with a few coworkers, and he still carried the uneasy feeling of guilt from lying as he arrived at the agreed upon location. To his surprise, The discomfort churning in his gut caused by that guilt changed to a sort of flustered nervousness as he caught sight of Kaneki sitting on a bench, smiling brightly at him. 

Amon’s presence was surprisingly comforting. Being a ghoul, Kaneki was obviously able to keep himself safe in situations like this, but Amon as was so tall and broad, walking next to him was like having a handsome security guard escorting him down the darkened streets.

“Follow me,” Amon instructed without breaking step. They had discussed being secretive and discreet, but the intensity this situation had reached already had Kaneki finding it all a bit humorous. Eagerly, he stood up and trailed a few paces behind Amon as they walked in silence. After a moment, Amon cleared his throat.

“Ah, um, you can walk beside me if you want,” he stuttered, quietly blushing at the way that sounded, as they turned down a narrow side street. “You don’t have to stay so far back now that we’re off the busier streets.”

Feeling endeared at the Amon’s bashfulness, Kaneki followed his suggestion, falling into step beside him. Amon’s presence was surprisingly comforting. Being a ghoul, Kaneki was obviously able to keep himself safe in situations like this, but Amon as was so tall and broad, walking next to him was like having a handsome security guard escorting him down the darkened streets.

They approached a small black car. Kaneki was startled when it beeped and he heard the locks clicking; this tiny vehicle belonged to Amon? Could the massive investigator even fit in there?

A moment later he had his answer as they sat side by side. It felt strange and surreal to be sitting so closely to a dove who had quite recently tried his hardest to take Kaneki’s life. As Kaneki quietly gave him directions to where Torso often spent his nights, a thought abruptly crossed his mind.

Should he kill him?

Here they were, late at night, on a narrow, seldom driven road. The investigator beside him was hindered by his seatbelt, quinque in reach but not so easily accessible. Kaneki wasn’t even sure how it could be activated in the tiny space of the car. It would probably give him enough time to incapacitate the dove and kill him before he’d be given the chance to counterattack. The skin of his kakuhou tingled as he considered this.

No, something didn’t feel right. Kaneki couldn’t say what it was that stopped him from acting, but despite this remarkably perfect opportunity, he felt no urgency or desire to kill the dove. The familiarity of his surroundings pulled him out of his thoughts as he realized they had arrived at the destination.

“Park here.” Kaneki was surprised to hear his own voice waver slightly. Amon complied, pulling the vehicle to a halt. “I’ve seen that ghoul here on a pretty regular basis, usually around this time.” Amon remained silent for a moment as he surveyed their surroundings.

“Pardon me for asking, but,” Amon cleared his throat, fidgeting with his crucifix. “what were you doing in a place like this? And often enough to know this? It seems-”

“I walk home from work this way,” Kaneki cut Amon off, his voice loud and confident. “My roommate works nearby, so we take this shortcut together. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why we’ve never been attacked…” he mused, his voice turning soft. Unconsciously, the dove leaned closer, straining to hear his words. Kaneki relaxed minutely at his reaction. “Maybe because there are two of us?”

“Possibly.” Amon muttered, clearing his throat yet again and continued. “Whatever the reason, I’m very glad you haven’t been harmed.” Another brief pause. “I just mean… it seems miraculous that a normal citizen could frequent an area like this and not be harmed.” He picked at his hands as he said this, looking down at his lap. Kaneki watched him, feeling the poorly disguised warmth and embarrassment in his voice. He placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled hesitantly.

“Thank you, Amon-san,” he murmured, images of when he had been trying to kill the dove replaying in his mind. He felt nauseous with guilt. “You don’t know how happy I am, too, that you haven’t been hurt in your line of work.”

They sat together like this for another two hours or so, mostly in silence but for the occasional small talk. There was no sign of any activity, not even the odd human passing through. Kaneki found himself feeling worried that Amon would think he was just lying, wouldn’t want his help anymore, might return his investigation to Hinami. Just as he decided to voice his concern and defend himself, Amon spoke.

“I think we should stop for tonight,” he lowered his head. “But… are you available the same time tomorrow?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaah it is killing me to not be able to speak from Amon's point of view so I hope things don't seem to jarring ?? anyway thank you for your comments and kudos and support so far I really appreciate it!


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